Hitherto regular studio albums and soundtracks had alternated, but in April 1963 "It Happened At The World's Fair" followed "Girls! Girls! Girls!". Starting on the 20th of the month the album was listed on Billboard's "Top LPs Chart" for 26 weeks and peaked at number four. In its initial sales period "It Happened At The World's Fair" moved 300,000 units, the overall sales volume is 3 million. Translated into the present that would be 450 million paid streams of the complete album or 4.5 billion paid streams of individual tracks. Therefore the soundtrack of Elvis' latest movie (for a review of "It Happened At The World's Fair" tap HERE) was on par with studio albums like "Elvis Is Back!" (1960) and "Something For Everybody" (1961), but a vast 1.5 million units behind "Girls! Girls! Girls!" Today the difference is even bigger. While "Girls! Girls! Girls!" accumulates 108 million streams on Spotify, "It Happened At The World's Fair" was listened to just 4.5 million times.

On the front cover the singer is shown in a smart business suit, on the back RCA Victor did without advertising other Presley records. To me the packaging looks very nice. However, the label did promote additional releases on the photo card, that was enclosed to the first pressing of the album.

On the streaming platforms "It Happened At The World's Fair" is available as released on February 28, 2019. I don't know if any further mixing or mastering has been done since 2016, when the core of the Presley albums was re-worked for "The Album Collection". For this project all tracks were scanned with high-resolution equipment and remastered. Therefore the album can be presented with the golden Hi-Res emblem. The better sound of these versions is owed exclusively to the new mastering (the elimination of interfering noise). Because first one cannot turn an analogue recording into a high resolution recording just by scanning the tape with hd equipment and second even an old cd with 16 bit/44.1 kHz exceeds the auditory sense of a human being.

It was planned to record the songs for the movie on August 28 and 29, 1962 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood/California. Producer was Leith Stevens, the engineer was Dave Weichman. Elvis' band was made up of Scotty Moore (guitar), D.J. Fontana (drums), Billy Strange (guitar), Hilmer J. Timbrell (guitar), Ray Siegel (bass), Frank Carlson (drums), Dudley Brooks (piano and organ), Don Robertson (piano and organ) and Clifford Scott (saxophone). The harmony vocals were provided by The Jordanaires (Gordon Stoker, Hoyt Hawkins, Neal Matthews and Ray Walker). Because the singer had caught the flu the sessions were postponed to August 30th, but after Elvis still wasn't able to record more than two songs it was moved to September 22nd. On this date The Jordanaires were not available, so Leith Stevens booked The Mello Men (Thurl Ravenscroft, Bill Lee, Bill Cole and Max Smith) instead. The movie version of "Take Me To The Fair" was recorded on October 16, 1962 at the MGM Soundstage. Leith Stevens (producer) and Fred Mulculpin (sound engineer) simply used the master take and added an ukulele, which was played by Billy Strange.

In contrast to Paramount, MGM made no concessions regarding the needs of the record label. They ordered to have Elvis' voice on one track, the band on another and the backup voices on a third. The fourth track was to be left blank for the use by MGM. Besides that the recording wasn't to have any ambience. For the movie company this was the optimal way to record a soundtrack, but on a proper stereo equipment at home the sharp separation of the lead vocalist, the musicians and the harmony singers sounded strange and without any ambience everything appeared to be dull and flat. The solution would have been to record separate versions for the album, but obviously neither RCA Victor, nor Elvis himself bothered to do so.

Back in 2003 Follow That Dream Records released a special edition of "It Happened At The World's Fair", which featured several outtakes. Tap HERE to read the review.

The album starts with an uptempo popsong written by Ben Weisman, Fred Wise and Dolores Fuller. The singer hopes to find his luck somewhere else at another place somewhere beyond the bend. Originally the first line was to be "wheels, sing a happy song" because Elvis was supposed to be driving a car. When the script was changed and the singer was flying in a plane, the writers changed it to "breeze, sing a happy song". To me "Beyond The Bend" is a nice, but also quite forgetable tune. It was recorded on September 22, 1962. Take 4 was selected as master.

Because his girlfriend acts a bit too reserved, the singer wants her to relax. Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett obviously followed "Fever" by Eddie Cooley and John Davenport (a pseudonym of Otis Blackwell), so the song isn't really original. Nevertheless it's worth listening to. Elvis recorded "Relax" on August 30, 1962 and needed 13 takes to reach a satisfactory result.

This is a typical movie tune. In the accordant scene Elvis and his buddy are sitting on the lorry bed of a truck on the way to the world's fair in Seattle and try to excite a little girl about their destination. In the movie the scene is quite cute, but on record the song appears to be nothing but a filler. "Take Me To The Fair" was recorded on September 22, 1962 within eight takes.

Elvis recorded this beautiful ballad on the same day, take nine was chosen to be the master. The fans already knew the song from the b-side of the previously released single "One Broken Heart For Sale". Later RCA Victor also released it on "The Other Sides - Worldwide Gold Award Hits Volume 2" (1971) and via their own budget label CAMDEN on "Elvis Sings Hits From His Movies - Volume 1" (1972). For Don Robertson, the writer of "They Remind Me Too Much Of You", it turned out to be a stroke of luck to have been booked as a pianist for these sessions. Because suddenly someone realized that the song was that similar to "Chapel In The Moonlight", that there might have been a copyright issue. Robertson could save his song from being skipped by making some adjustments. However, now it sounded very much like "Anything That's Part Of You". But because this one had also been written by Don, there was no danger of being sued. To me this is a great song which certainly wouldn't have been out of place on a regular studio album of the king.

As mentioned before, this one was first released on a single. Later RCA Victor also included it on the boxed set "Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits - Volume 1" (1970). With a running time of 1:34 minutes the song is very short, so it's somewhat strange that RCA didn't use the movie version which included another verse. "One Broken Heart For Sale" was also recorded on September 22nd, take 5 was chosen for release. In the song, written by Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott, the singer pours out his heart and offers it for sale. Even though the lyrics are sad, the melody is happy and stays with you. It's quite similar to "Return To Sender" (also written by Blackwell and Scott), but I like it very much. In fact, this is one of my favorite movie tunes. The a-side of the album ends with this song.

Here we have another ballad by Don Robertson, who also played the organ on the recording. This happend on September 22, 1962, Elvis and his team wrapped the tune within eight takes. It's a good lovesong, but it doesn't match "They Remind Me Too Much Of You".

This is supposed to be a children's song, but it has a somewhat creepy undertone. I can imagine this song in a thriller to accentuate a scene of a infanticide. However, it wasn't meant this way by Ruth Batchelor and Bob Roberts. Elvis recorded "Cotton Candy Land" on September 22nd and needed five attempts to reach a satisfactory take.

This bland popsong was also taped on September 22nd, this time in a single take. It's not bad, but it's forgotten as soon as the last note has faded. "A World Of Our Own" was written by Bill Giant, Bernie Baum and Florence Kaye, who would deliver dozens of unimaginative movie tunes in the future.

The second children's song of the movie is sung by Elvis and Vicky Tiu, but on the album we just hear the voice of Mr. Presley. For whatever reason RCA thought it was a good idea to couple a Christmas song with this tune and released it on the b-side of "If Every Day Was Like Christmas" in 1966. It was also included on the CAMDEN release "Elvis Sings Hits From His Movies - Volume 1" (1972). The king needed six takes for this song when he recorded it on September 22, 1962. The composers are Ben Raleigh and Mark Barkan.

Ben Weisman and Sid Wayne wrote the song for the finale of the movie. Elvis recorded it on August 30, 1962 and selected take 8 as record master and take 9 as movie master. "Happy Ending" is not a great song, but good enough and certainly one of the better ones on this album.